Single keywords on branches |
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Last week I received a question from a NovaMind user, asking me how to make his Mind Maps better through use of single keywords. His question was in response to the NovaMind Lesson 4 which is about brainstorming and Mind Map creation. He is a biology teacher and wants to create better Mind Maps for his class, but finds that they always end up with lots of words on them. In that lesson, I talk about one of the principles of Mind Mapping where you are to choose keywords and use them on your Mind Maps. This is because it is the combination of the keywords plus the associations between them that both work together to give you a set of neurological connections between the ideas. This way of organizing things also works best for sharing the information because different people have their brains “wired” in different ways, and when you just have the keywords there, it fits in with both their world view and your world view. Another aspect is that if you have a complete sentence there, there is just passive acceptance of information input - you are not actively making the connections in your brain, and you are also missing out on the natural extension of the ideas to new areas - this is stifled by completed sentences. Having said all that, let me quote my reply to Lai: After having worked with Mind Mapping for many years, I have come to the conclusion that there are some times where you do want to have phrases and sentences on branches rather than just words. This is the exception rather than the rule though. I suggest you try putting just one or two words on each branch and see how you go. It will force you to think carefully about what ideas are really representative of the point you are wanting to make with the paragraph. In some cases, a paragraph may convert into one main keyword and several sub-branches with a keyword on each. This really does open up thinking about the core meaning of the topic and the association of the refinements and explanations to the main topic. Many people I have taught this to have made the switch to this way of organizing their thoughts and although they found the transition difficult at first, now they say they will never go back. In Mind Mapping, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to organize your Mind Map, so don’t be scared to try things out and find what works best for you. All the best Gideon If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Leave a Reply |
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